Chronicles of the Sword mode... Ugh.

Since church starts in approximately three hours, I figured that I’ve put another all-nighter of Crosswords DS and Soul Calibur III behind me.  Seeing as how I haven’t written a blog post yet, I decided to write one in the spur of the moment if only to appease the few people who will read it.  This isn’t exactly the hard-hitting editorial content I want to put on, but I figured my first post shouldn’t be as epic as I originally planned it to be.

Anyway, I’ve been messing around with Soul Calibur III in preparation for Soul Calibur IV on Tuesday.  I plugged in my PlayStation 2 and my Tekken 5 arcade stick and set myself on unlocking every part of the game.  Unfortunately, the easiest way to unlock everything is to beat the Chronicles of the Sword mode many times over.  I appreciate Namco’s honest try at combining a real-time strategy game with a fighting game, but the entirety of that mode bores me to death.  Thankfully, my brother was able to unlock all the components needed to make KOS-MOS from the Xenosaga series and creating a character in her likeness has only made the game humorous and appealing.  I’m still going strong, and I’m getting extremely close to my goal.

Ahh... I can't wait...

In more Soul Calibur news, I put in my order for the Soul Calibur IV Hori Fighting Stick 3 a couple days ago and it should be arriving a day or two after the game comes out.  I don’t know what it is about fighting games, but I need to play on an arcade stick unless it’s Super Smash Bros.  On top of that, it needs to be the Japanese “ball-and-stick” configuration and not the North American “baseball bat” handle.  Call me a stickler, but I feel more comfortable that way.  I’ll post some impressions when the package arrives.

Another guilty pleasure of mine lately is Crosswords DS.  The game features crosswords as advertised, but there are also wordsearch puzzles and anagrams.  I’ve been particularly addicted to the anagrams; they’ve made the past few nights practically sleepless and it doesn’t help that I’m listening to old episodes of GFW Radio as well.  The game does sport very shallow offerings and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you don’t mind playing word games whenever you have some downtime.  The interface is clean and it clearly has the same simplicity that the Brain Age titles do.  Blah, I’m hoping Final Fantasy Tactics A2 will get me out of my casual DS gaming funk.

I also tried out the Elefunk and PixelJunk Eden demos yesterday and I must say that both are downloads that I absolutely must buy in the future.  I’ll see how my wallet holds up after Geometry Wars 2 and Bionic Commando: Rearmed release.  Still, Elefunk is amazingly deep for its asking price and PixelJunk Eden only reinvigorates my enthusiasm for the PlayStation Network’s downloadable lineup.  I purchased Zoolander from the PlayStation Store and the picture holds up really well even in standard definition (DVD quality); my girlfriend said she hasn’t seen the movie at all, so we’ll be watching that later today.

A queasy game indeed.

Speaking of downloadable content, I’ve been trying to unlock everything is Everyday Shooter as well.  The game certainly isn’t Geometry Wars in terms of its fun factor, but it’s nice to see a good game coming from the mind of a single person.  Anyway, the game is still hard to get through, even months after I first downloaded it.  My impressions haven’t changed at all though: If you’re looking for Geometry Wars on PS3, just buy Super Stardust HD instead.  Everyday Shooter lacks the same sort of fast-paced frenzy.  I mean, there's lots of dodging and diving involved, but it somehow feels slower.